THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE

What the sexual revolution and women's liberation--plus homegrown permissiveness--have done to our children: incest; child prostitution; a walloping runaway rate; kiddie porn; and more. Janus, who titillated us with A Sexual Profile of Men in Power (1977), seems genuinely concerned in this instance; but he's not very original in identifying causes, not very specific about how to counteract the ""revolutions"" he blames. Yes, we can prosecute purveyors of child pornography; but what becomes of the children who are driven into that route--who are essentially ""throwaway"" kids? An effort to provide some child prostitutes in New York with free transportation back to their Midwestern homes (whence they arrived through ""the Minnesota pipeline"") failed miserably; the kids had nothing to go back to. Janus, in fact, asserts that 72 percent of child prostitutes and pornography subjects are running away from an incestuous home environment. Lots of case histories and questionnaire results tell us, for example, just how an incestuous relationship begins and is carried on; and Janus is quick to correlate such factors as lack of curfew with increased sexual activity (his criteria for sexually active and inactive teenagers are complicated and rather open to dispute). Overall, indeed, he examines this serious subject in more detail than depth.